The present invention relates to a liquid crystal display (LCD) and, more particularly, to a viewing angle controllable LCD.
LCDs have the advantages of high definition, small volume, light weight, low driving voltage, low power consumption and wide application range. Thus, LCDs are widely used in consumer electronics or computers such as medium to small sized portable televisions (TVs), mobile phones, video recorders and players, notebook computers, desktop displays, displays in automobiles, and projection TVs and have generally become a popular choice for display devices, gradually replacing Cathode Ray Tubes (CRT). In recent years, the LCD market has significantly expanded, especially in applications of computers and notebook computers. Consequently, features such as wide area, high resolution, wide viewing angle, and quick reaction time play key roles when consumers evaluate the quality of an LCD.
Although a wide viewing angle is increasingly important when it comes to the functionality of an LCD, in certain situations an LCD with a wide viewing angle may not be ideal due to privacy concerns of a user. For example, an LCD with a wide viewing angle may allow more people to share a display image. Although this may be desirable with, for example, a television, a wide viewing angle may unfortunately allow unauthorized views of a display image, such as airplane passengers improperly viewing a laptop computer display of a co-passenger.